Chartoff Prods. heats ‘Ice’

Pic based on Shackleton's Endurance expedition to the Antarctic

Robert Chartoff and Lynn Hendee of Chartoff Prods. are heating up “Ice,” producing an action-adventure feature film based on the true story of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition to the Antarctic.

“Ice” has been developed at the banner with Lori Nelson, who wrote the script and is also producing. Project’s out to directors with the goal of a 2015 release to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, an attempt to become the first land crossing of the continent.

Disaster hit the expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed in 1915. All 27 men on the expedition were ultimately rescued with no lives lost.

“I could not have found a better home for a passion project that has consumed me for more than 25 years, when I first sailed a 40-foot ketch to the Antarctic and encountered Shackleton’s remarkable story,” Nelson said.

Producers are raising the film’s financing through independent equity sources.

The “Ice” feature film is one component of The Ice Project, a multi-platform approach to the Shackleton anniversary, which will include an expedition to locate the Endurance wreck site. Nelson is teaming with David Gallo, director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to assemble a team of deep sea exploration and logistics experts to determine the best technologies and techniques to locate and document Endurance’s final resting place on the Antarctic sea floor.

“Working on, through, and under the ice of the Weddell sea, in the harsh Antarctic environment, makes planning this expedition extremely challenging and interesting from an operational point of view,” Gallo said.

In addition to the feature and the dive expedition, an “Ice Heroes” grassroots campaign will be launched to raise awareness of ocean and Antarctic issues.

Chartoff, whose credits include the “Rocky” series, “The Right Stuff” and “Raging Bull,” is in production on an adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel “Ender’s Game” for Summit. His banner recently acquired feature rights to Rachel Carson’s environmental tome “Silent Spring,” which helped lead to the ban on pesticide DDT.